In a fashion e-commerce platform where customers can't physically examine the products on their own, being able to see other customers' text and image reviews of the product is critical while making purchase decisions. Given the high reliance on these reviews, over the years we have observed customers proactively sharing their reviews. With an increase in the coverage of User Generated Content (UGC), there has been a corresponding increase in the number of customer images. It is thus imperative to display the most relevant images on top as it may influence users' online shopping choices and behavior. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective training procedure for ranking customer images. We created a dataset consisting of Myntra (A Major Indian Fashion e-commerce company) studio posts and highly engaged (upvotes/downvotes) UGC images as our starting point and used selected distortion techniques on the images of the above dataset to bring their quality at par with those of bad UGC images. We train our network to rank bad-quality images lower than high-quality ones. Our proposed method outperforms the baseline models on two metrics, namely correlation coefficient, and accuracy, by substantial margins.

For the bulk of the past two years, the pandemic has put the kibosh on corporate travel of nearly any kind. This has dampened investors' enthusiasm in travel and expense (T&E) startups, predictably, whose expertise lies in creating software for travel and other forms of expensing. But as the appetite for in-person events and interactions returns to what it once was, T&E is again becoming a category of interest. Case in point: Itilite, a Bengaluru, India-based company developing T&E software, today announced that it raised $29 million in a Series C round co-led by Tiger Global and existing investor Dharana Capital with participation from Matrix Partners and Tenacity Ventures. In an interview with TechCrunch, CEO Mayank Kukreja said that the proceeds will be put toward "aggressively expand[ing] in North America via product innovation, sales and marketing and partnership development."

The last few years saw customers shift their preference from buying clothes at retail outlets to conveniently buying online on their gadgets. This change in customer behavior was further accelerated by COVID-19 as customers had to depend on buying online for most of their shopping needs. Despite COVID-19 beginning to ease off slowly, customers believe that shopping online is a lot more convenient than having to go from store to store to get what they're looking for. E-commerce brands are thus doing their best to keep their hard-earned customers engaged on their platform by delivering personalized user experiences. We caught up with Mohit Panjwani, Associate Director- Revenue Growth at Myntra to understand how e-commerce fashion brands like Myntra are leveraging the power of customer data and marketing analytics to craft memorable and personalized shopping experiences.

The last few years saw customers shift their preference from buying clothes at retail outlets to conveniently buying online on their gadgets. This change in customer behavior was further accelerated by COVID-19 as customers had to depend on buying online for most of their shopping needs. Despite COVID-19 beginning to ease off slowly, customers believe that shopping online is a lot more convenient than having to go from store to store to get what they’re looking for. E-commerce brands are thus doing their best to keep their hard-earned customers engaged on their platform by delivering personalized user experiences. We caught up with Mohit Panjwani, Associate Director- Revenue Growth at Myntra to understand how e-commerce fashion brands like Myntra are leveraging the power of customer data and marketing analytics to craft memorable and personalized shopping experiences. Myntra is India’s leading e-commerce company committed to making fashion and lifestyle products accessible to everyone. From its birth as a customization company in 2007 to being technology and fashion pioneers today, Myntra has grown to become the ultimate destination for fashion and lifestyle, being host to a wide array of merchandise including clothing, footwear, accessories, jewellery, personal care products, etc. Mohit shares his thoughts on: * Major customer engagement and retention challenges faced by e-commerce brands * Importance of adopting an omnichannel approach to effectively engage with customers across all touchpoints of the user journey * Need to have a consistent messaging across channels beyond website and app- thoughts on product recommendations, personalized emails, and app push notifications * How predicting customer churn through ML is critical to increasing retention * Innovative campaigns and ideas used to increase customer engagement and repeat purchase behavior * 3 biggest e-commerce trends that can pick up steam in 2021 Tune in to gain insights on how the best in the business caters to customer needs and requirements by delivering customer experiences at scale.

Amar Naagram, CEO, MyntraThe Covid-19 impact has forced companies across industries to adapt things which were previously considered impossible. Like almost every business, Myntra also had to move all their employees to work from home overnight just days before one of their biggest annual sale events. "From a vibrant office to working from home, I was pleasantly surprised how quickly we adapted to working from home. With the deployment of Azure, we were able to deliver one of our most successful End of Reason Sale remotely," Amar Nagaram, CEO, Myntra said. With their strategy to invest in technologies and digital capabilities, Myntra is today focused on innovation, speed and agility to strengthen its leadership position even further.

Indian e-commerce companies are still novices when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mining big data. Nevertheless, they are still betting big on AI, which they think could be the magic bullet that will help them offer tailored shopping experiences. In 2017, homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart announced the launch of an initiative called AI for India, wherein the company would develop solutions for issues like deciphering complex addresses and catching address fraud. Flipkart-owned fashion brand Myntra runs two AI-powered brands, Moda Rapido, and Here and Now. Delhi-based Paytm's homepage is personalised and reordered differently for each of its 225 million users, and the platform makes 20,000 recommendations per second--each of them in under 20 milliseconds.

Indian e-commerce companies are still novices when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and mining big data. Nevertheless, they are still betting big on AI, which they think could be the magic bullet that will help them offer tailored shopping experiences. In 2017, homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart announced the launch of an initiative called AI for India, wherein the company would develop solutions for issues like deciphering complex addresses and catching address fraud. Flipkart-owned fashion brand Myntra runs two AI-powered brands, Moda Rapido, and Here and Now. Delhi-based Paytm's homepage is personalised and reordered differently for each of its 225 million users, and the platform makes 20,000 recommendations per second--each of them in under 20 milliseconds.

The debate whether computers can be truly creative started two years ago after a special game of Go, an abstract strategy board game. The world champion, Lee Sedol, had just lost to AlphaGo, a computer program developed by the Google company DeepMind. What surprised the engineers and Go experts was that AlphaGo had secured the victory with a remarkable move that no human had ever done. The question is how artificial intelligence will be used in the workplace and if it will complement or substitute human skills. Michael Björn, co-author of the report and Head of Research at the Ericsson Consumer and Industry Lab, says: "The introduction of artificial intelligence systems will affect most professions in the future. In most cases the job roles will change rather than disappear. This means that people will need training to take on new tasks, and lifelong learning schemes will rise in importance."

One of the best-selling T-shirts for the Indian e-commerce site Myntra is an olive, blue and yellow colorblocked design. It was conceived not by a human but by a computer algorithm -- or rather two algorithms. The first algorithm generated random images that it tried to pass off as clothing. The second had to distinguish between those images and clothes in Myntra's inventory. Through a long game of one-upmanship, the first algorithm got better at producing images that resembled clothing, while the second got better at determining whether they were like -- but not identical to -- actual products.

In the 2006 film, The Devil Wears Prada, actor Meryl Streep who plays Miranda Priestly, a powerful fashion editor, gives her new assistant a dressing down for not understanding fashion. She tells her that fashion is whatever a select group of designers say it is. But what she fails to anticipate is how these czars of style will one day be challenged on their own turf by another set of fashionistas: machines. As artificial intelligence (AI) pervades almost every field today, lines of an algorithm are now sashaying down the catwalk. India's fashion and retail industry too have started to rely on the power of machines to come up with the latest styles.